Monday, March 7, 2011

K College's Munch Money, Room for Improvement?

Satisfaction of Munch Money with Kalamazoo College Students

Kalamazoo College students are unlike many other college students because they are required to stay in the dorms until their spring semester of junior year.Staying in the dorms requires students to purchase a meal plan with munch money.Kalamazoo College just started offering other options for students to spend their munch money on, including spending their money at Papa John’s, Biggby’s, and Stacks sub shop.Even though there’s more of a variety of choices to spend their munch money on, Kalamazoo College students aren’t satisfied with their current choices as they rated their current satisfaction as 6 out of 10.When asked if they were interested in more variety of food places to spend their munch money at, the students showed interest in having Munchie Mart and Jimmy John’s added to their choices and showed some interest in having Rice Kitchen added.

Kalamazoo College needs to do a better job at keeping their students satisfied with their meal plans and options on where to spend their munch money.For this study, we went around to all the dorms on campus and randomly surveyed the students living in the dorms.Out of the 57 responses, 45.6% were freshman, 33.3% sophomore, 15.8% juniors, 0% seniors, and 5.3% other.There was no seniors surveyed because they are not required to live on campus so it’s rare to find a senior living in the dorms with a meal plan.These students also gave us an insight as to what they spend their money on and where they spend their money.We found out through our data analysis that Kalamazoo College students spend about 50% of their total expenditures on food, which is relatively high compared to other campuses surveyed.We also found that 41 out of the 57 students surveyed had munch money left over from the previous semester, meaning that most students spend their munch money during the semester.

After analyzing this information, we come to the conclusion that Kalamazoo College should offer more of a variety of food choices for their students to spend their munch money on.With a low satisfaction rate of 6 out of 10, Kalamazoo College students clearly aren’t satisfied with the current selection and they also showed interested in Munchie Mart (7.3 out of 10) and Jimmy John’s (7.8 out of 10).Both of these places are within walking distance to the school so they will be accessible to the students and will make the students more satisfied.Kalamazoo College students spend a larger majority of their money on food than most students at other schools so offering a bigger variety of food for students to spend their munch money at will help bring in more revenue for local Kalamazoo food places.More satisfied Kalamazoo College students will encourage them to purchase bigger meal plans from the school so they can get more munch money, which helps Kalamazoo College generate more revenue as well as build relationships with local businesses.